Team:UCL/Safety
Overview
Safety has been at the heart of PET-ZAP since the initial phase of our project. Our team has worked with UCL Biochemical Department, Engineering faculty, as well as experts from industry and other research institutes to address any potential safety issues in our project. We have focused on the safety of three aspects: GMO usage in project design, lab work performed by team Exeter, and social studies carried out by our team’s Science Communication and Human Practices groups.
Please find our most updated Safety form here
Safe Project Design
To ensure biosafety, our project only proposes working with non-pathogenic safety level 1 species even though we are completely dry lab based this year. Our project design includes engineering three bacterial species to degrade plastics and generate bioelectricity to desalinate saline water. We have chosen to engineer the following strains:
Safe Lab Work – in collaboration with Exeter
Due to the global pandemic situation this year, our project does not include any wet lab components. Instead, our collaborators in the Exeter iGEM team are conducting characterization experiments for us. We are having frequent communications with Exeter regarding experiment protocols and risk management under the guidance of supervisors from both teams. Our discussions covered potential risks of the following:
Safe Social Studies
Our human practices and science communication groups have ensured secure data handling when conducting surveys to collect sensitive personal data and public opinions by focusing on the following aspects:
